pirate king (pirate!au) ➵ ateez ✔️

drowning

You curse aloud.

"Oh dear, how crass." The quartermaster shakes his head, his face bears a disappointed expression. You snarl when his fingers reach out to tug your face upwards, snap at them with your teeth. Someone hits you across the back hard.

"Chin Hae!" Hongjoong gasps. You cough, stars swimming in your vision, turning around to glare at the burly man towering over you with a roughly hewn oar - a clear culprit. For all your bravado, though, there's a sinking feeling in your chest. The Treasure is nowhere to be seen.

The two of you are, for a lack of better expression, totally fucked.

"Just returning the favour for kidnapping us." Your words leave your mouth as a angry hiss. The quartermaster only laughs, the sound like wind rustling over dry grass. It's like poison wrapped in sugar. You don't like it.

"I must apologise." To your surprise, he holds out a hand, gestures to the crew. "Untie the lady. This is unacceptable treatment of such an important guest."

Important guest? The words echo in your mind, but before you can make sense of them, there's a hand roughly yanking you to your feet, slicing through the coarse ropes like water. Instantly you rub at your chaffed wrists, feeling the skin sting at your touch. Exactly how long have you been out for?

"What about my captain?" You demand lowly, cautious now. There must be a reason why he's treating you like this, and you're desperate to find out. Maybe you could find a way to negotiate your way out of this. Maybe you could find a way to save your captain. Maybe-

"Ahh, no, the pirate king stays wrapped up for now. I apologise for the discomfort, your majesty." The words he directs at your captain are light and airy, yet they carry more impact than that of a loaded musket. Spiteful chuckles ring out from behind you at their quartermaster's obvious jab, and your one hand clenches into a tight fist.

"Why did you kidnap us?" You demand, folding your arms across your chest to conceal the trembling in your fingers. The quartermaster merely tilts one corner of his mouth up in a smile, taking a seat on a chair that one of his crew must have brought out for him.

"Apart from the fact that two of you were clearly sneaking about on my ship?" You scowl, eyes darkening in response to the velvet smooth confidence in his voice. "Perhaps you don't know how things work here, but anyone who steps on board this ship is mine." His slate grey eyes only seem to reflect your image when you look into them, like the sheen coming off wet glass. You're stepping on thin glass here. "Everyone here, from every slave who breathes to every member of this crew, their lives belong to me."

Ghostly fingers almost seem to brush down your spine. There's something chilling about the way he says it, with so much conviction, how behind him his crew nods in agreement, murmuring amongst themselves. He's dangerously charismatic, you can feel it, for all his warped way of thinking.

"That's not what I was asking." You retort, desperate to get rid of the cold that has seemed to settle over you. "I was asking why you kidnapped us instead of killing us. It was a trap the entire time, wasn't it? You want us alive for something, don't you?"

"Chin Hae-" Your captain tries to speak, but a pirate simply fists his across the cheek and you nearly scream in horror, moving towards him when a rough hand catches you by the wrist, grip of iron firmly locking you in place.

"Captain-" You cry out, but the quartermaster merely shushes you with a finger over his lips, watching your captain spit on the deck, red staining the wooden boards.

"Don't you know that it is poor manners to interrupt a lady when she's talking?" He asks, voice charmingly soft, numbingly terrifying. Your captain gives him a look so dark that even you shiver in response, but the quartermaster merely ignores him, turning back to you with a pure smile painted across his face as if the little fiasco never happened. "What made you think that way?"